Content

...about the current situation in your geography or your industry. You may have new services and products that you would like to present or success stories with customers you want to share.

We all know what it is like to be sitting in front of a blank page… Turning ideas into content that your target audience will appreciate is very difficult. Some want to say it all in one article, others don’t provide the level of sophistication and detail needed to captivate their readers; some are experts at picking the right channel to convey their message, while others use them but in an awkward way.

Why is it important to produce content? In the world of media, it’s always been about content. But it is quite new that banks, consulting firms or fast-food restaurants have to produce anything else than their traditional banking products, professional services or hamburgers. Now they are required to build an image, to tell a story, to compete in a digital world and to grab their customers and prospects attention by producing content that links – more or less – to their core business.

If you don’t, you’re out. And if you aren’t completely out, you lose a fantastic opportunity to stay in touch with your audience.

Making content really count

Yet producing random content alone is not enough. To be seen as an expert by your environment and ultimately to gain trust and inspire people to look to you for advice, or even just for a productive brainstorm, you need to produce the right content and package it in the right way.

So simply telling interesting stories to an audience overburdened with information is not enough.

And you face two constraints:

1) The actual content

First and foremost, you must have the expertise to produce content about a certain topic. You can even go so far to say that no content is better than badly researched stories or boring stuff you’ve already read or heard ten times.

What you need is interesting, attention-grabbing information useful to your target clients. As an expert, you want to show deep industry knowledge and offer fresh insights into the business. You can reach that by publishing analyses, facts and figures, success stories, commenting on relevant articles or informing the public about your new or existing offerings.

To demonstrate genuine expertise in your field, the best idea can be to keep it simple – we all know people who explain things with a thousand words, unable to convey their knowledge, and others who will be able to communicate their story and position themselves as experts with just one sentence. Depending on where you are, who you are talking to, you need to choose the right level of detail.

Finally, you must ask yourself if the content is relevant to your target customer: as a law firm, you need to take a different approach if you are seeking to reach large business accounts or if you want to represent divorcing couples. Step into the shoes of your hottest target and ask yourself what they would be interested to find out from you.

Content is not only printed words. To show your expertise, you can use many other smart and entertaining means. A thought-through graphic can say more than thousand words, and a picture can express what you cannot quickly write; a video of an interview with an interesting personality or a webinar are also great ways to present your story to your target audience.

2) The packaging

The nicest present will not charm you as much as if it is packaged in beautiful wrapping paper: the same applies to your story. To reach your target customer, you need to go beyond the content itself.

There are trends in the way content is conveyed: atomisation of content that fits in line with the new channels that the digital world holds ready for us. A decade ago, there was a huge appetite for email newsletters – now customers get rewarded for subscribing to newsletters they will never read and immediately divert to their spam folder without giving them even the slightest look…

Your content does not deserve to end in digital limbo.

Get it ready; get it read

Using the appropriate channel and shaping your story accordingly will save you from that unenviable outcome. Remember who you are reaching out to, depending on criteria such as age, level of qualification, geography and technical constraints, e.g. on Twitter and the platform users’ specific expectations. Drafting a message to accompany a picture you want to share on Instagram is totally different from writing an article for a national business newspaper.

Using multiple channels will help reach your audience at different times and in different moods. Some platforms are strictly dedicated to business in which you will convey your expertise, others to news or to recruiting talent, for entertainment or for making visual statements. You need to identify where and how to reach and to involve your target readers. The regularity of your publications is also an important aspect, often neglected. A Facebook page that is updated twice a year with unexciting content will not help anyone boost their image – not to mention their revenue.

Take action to exploit the entire spectrum – analogue and digital.

Using a client-centric approach, Gelst can help you to develop relevant content. It is carefully crafted and structured to achieve your goals; we identify the appropriate channels to convey it, as well as supporting your marketing team with research and secondary research, and also in developing graphics rendering your ideas or assisting with professional image research. We work with a team of carefully selected copy-editors, translators and business experts who can accompany you in telling your story in such way that it really makes an impact.